Inter Process Communication and

related system calls

Prepared by:
Shreeji Sheth
Technical Associate (Embedded)| eiTRA

Methods for IPC

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Message Passing base

Memory based

Message Passing based

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Pipe-works for parent and child or child of

common parent process
Queue
FIFO-named pipes-supports more then one
readers and writers
Semaphores
Signaling

Memory Based
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Shared memory
Memory mapped files

System Calls
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FIFO
int mkfifo(const char *pathname, mode_t mode);
Mknod
Open(),close(),unlink()
Read(), write()-4k max
Write operation is atomic
Opening FIFO for read or write blocks until other
process opens it for write or read

System Calls...
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Pipe
Pipe()
Read(),write(),close()

System Calls...
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Queue
Msgget(), msgctl(), msgsnd(), msgrcv(),

System Calls...
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Signals
Signal.h
int kill(int pid, int signal); //where signal value
can be SIGHUP 1 /* hangup */ ;SIGINT 2 /*
interrupt */; SIGQUIT 3 /* quit */; SIGILL 4 /*
illegal instruction */; SIGABRT 6 /* used by
abort */; SIGKILL 9 /* hard kill */; SIGALRM
14 /* alarm clock */; SIGCONT 19 /* continue a
stopped process */; SIGCHLD 20 /* to parent
on child stop or exit */

System Calls...
Signals
int raise(int sig) equivalent to kill(getpid(), sig);
int sighold(int sig) -- adds sig to the calling
process's signal mask
int sigrelse(int sig) -- removes sig from the calling
process's signal mask
int sigignore(int sig) -- sets the disposition of sig to
SIG_IGN
int sigpause(int sig) -- removes sig from the
calling process's signal mask and suspends the
calling process until a signal is received

System calls...
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Shared Memory
Shmget()
Ftok()
Shmat(),shmdt(),shmctl()
Shmat() returns pointer to the shared memory
segment

System Calls
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Socket programming
Socket(),
bind(),connect(),listen(),accept(),recvfrom(),sen
dto()-for connection less,recv(),send()-for
connection oriented, close(),